Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.27–8.7

But if the soul is made in order to be sent into a body, it may be asked whether it is compelled if it does not wish it. But it is better believed that it wills this naturally, that is, that it is created in such a nature as to will it, just as it is natural for us to will to live; but to live badly is no longer a matter of nature but of a perverse will, which punishment justly follows. It is useless, then, to ask any longer from what material, as it were, the soul was made, if it can rightly be understood to have been made in those first works, when the day was made; for just as those things which did not exist were made, so was this among them. But if there was also some formable material, both bodily and spiritual (yet not itself set up except by God, from whom are all things), which preceded its own forming not in time but in origin, as sound precedes song, what is more fittingly believed than that the soul was made from spiritual material?

But if anyone does not want to think that the soul was made except when it was breathed into the formed body, let him see what he will answer when asked from what it was made. For either he will say that God made or makes something from nothing after that completion of his works, and he must consider how he will explain that man was made on the sixth day to the image of God (which cannot rightly be understood except of the soul), that is, in what nature the causal reason was made of a thing that did not yet exist; or he will say that the soul was made not from nothing but from something already existing, and he will labor in inquiring what that nature is, whether bodily or spiritual, according to the questions we turned over above, while that difficulty also remains, that it is still asked in which substance of the creatures first founded in the six days God made that causal reason of the soul, which he had not yet made either from nothing or from something. And if he wishes to avoid this by saying that man was also made from the mud on the sixth day, but that this was mentioned afterwards by way of recapitulation, let him see what he will say about the woman, because it says, “Male and female he made them, and he blessed them.” And if he answers that she too was made on that day from the man's bone, let him consider how he will assert that the birds that were brought to Adam were made on the sixth day, when Scripture indicates that every kind of bird was created from the waters on the fifth day; and likewise that the trees which were planted in paradise were made on the sixth day, when the same Scripture assigned this kind of creature to the third day. Let him also consider the words themselves, what is meant by “He made to spring up besides from the earth every tree beautiful to look at and good for food,” as though those which the earth had brought forth on the third day were not beautiful to look at and good for food, when they were among the works all of which God made very good; and what is meant by “God formed besides from the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the sky,” as though those first produced were not all, or rather none had been produced before. For it does not say, “And God formed besides from the earth the rest of the beasts of the field and the rest of the birds of the sky,” as if supplying those which the earth on the sixth day or the water on the fifth day had produced less, but “all the beasts,” it says, “and all the birds.” Let him also think how God both made all things in six days (first the day itself, on the second the firmament, on the third the form of sea and land and from the land plants and trees, on the fourth the lights and stars, on the fifth the creatures of the waters, on the sixth those of the land) and it is afterwards said, “When the day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing of the field,” since, when the day was made, he made nothing but the day itself; how, too, he made every green thing of the field before it was upon the earth, and every plant before it sprang up; for who would not say it was made when it sprang up, not before it sprang up, unless the words of Scripture called him back? Let him remember too that it is written, “He who lives for ever created all things together,” and see how things can be said to have been created together whose creation is separated by intervals of time, not only of hours but of days. Let him take care also to show how both are true, though they may seem contrary: that God rested on the seventh day from all his works, as the book of Genesis says, and that he is working until now, as the Lord says. Let him consider too how the things said to have been completed are said also to have been begun. For by all these testimonies of divine Scripture, which no one doubts to be truthful except an unbeliever or an ungodly man, we were led to the view that we said God from the beginning of the age first created all things together, some with their natures already founded, some with their causes founded beforehand; just as the Almighty made not only present things but also future ones, and rested from making them, so that afterwards, by governing and ruling them, he might also create the orders of times and of temporal things; for he had both completed them, because of the boundaries of all kinds, and begun them, because of the unfolding of the ages, so that because of the completed things he rested, and because of the begun things he is working until now. But if these things can be better understood, I not only do not resist but welcome it. For now, however, about the soul which God breathed into man by breathing into his face, I affirm nothing except that it is from God in such a way that it is not the substance of God, and that it is bodiless, that is, not a body but a spirit; not begotten from the substance of God nor proceeding from the substance of God, but made by God; and not made in such a way that any nature of body or of irrational soul was turned into its nature, and therefore made from nothing; and that it is immortal according to a certain mode of life which it can in no way lose; but according to a certain changeableness, by which it can become worse or better, it may not unfittingly be understood to be also mortal, since true immortality belongs only to him of whom it is properly said, “who alone has immortality.” The other things I have said in this book by way of discussion should serve the reader for this: either to know how the things which Scripture does not say openly are to be inquired into without rashness in affirming, or, if this way of inquiring does not please him, to let me know how he himself has inquired, so that, if he can teach me, I may not refuse; but if he cannot, let him seek with me the one from whom we may both learn.

“And God planted paradise in Eden toward the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed.” I am not unaware that many people have said many things about paradise; yet there are, so to speak, three general views on the matter. One is of those who want paradise to be understood only bodily; another of those who want it understood only spiritually; the third of those who take paradise in both ways, sometimes bodily and sometimes spiritually. To put it briefly, then, I confess that the third view pleases me. According to it I have undertaken now to speak about paradise, as the Lord will deign to grant, so that the man made from mud (which is certainly a human body) may be understood as placed in a bodily paradise. Just as Adam himself, even if he signifies something else, according to the apostle's saying that he was a type of the one to come, is still taken as a man expressed in his own nature, who lived a certain number of years and, having produced numerous offspring, died, just as other men die, even if he was not born from parents like the rest but was made from the earth, as had to be at the first; so too paradise, in which God placed him, is to be understood as nothing other than a certain place, namely of the earth, where an earthly man might live. For the narrative in these books is not in the kind of speech used for figurative things, as in the Song of Songs, but is wholly of things done, as in the books of Kingdoms and others of that kind. But because in those books things are said which the most familiar experience of human life contains, they are taken first, not with difficulty but very readily, in the literal sense, so that afterwards one may draw out from them what the very events also signified of things to come; here, however, because things are said which do not occur to those who look at the usual course of nature, some do not want them understood as said properly but figuratively, and they want the history, that is, the narrative of things properly done, to begin from the point where Adam and Eve, sent out of paradise, came together and had children. As though it were usual for us that they lived so many years, or that Enoch was taken away, or that a woman both very old and barren gave birth, and the like. “But,” they say, “a narrative of wonderful deeds is one thing, a narrative of the founding of creatures another; for there the very unusualness of the events shows that there are some modes of things that are natural, so to speak, and others that are miracles (which are called mighty works), whereas here the founding of natures itself is being presented.” To them the answer is: but these too are unusual because they are the first. For what is so without example and without equal in the establishment of worldly things as the world? Is it therefore not to be believed that God made the world, because he no longer makes worlds, or that he made the sun, because he no longer makes suns? And this answer should indeed have been given to those disturbed not about paradise but about man himself; but as it is, since they believe that man was made by God in a way that no one else was made, why are they unwilling to believe that paradise was made in the way they now see woods come to be? I am speaking, of course, to those who follow the authority of these writings; for some of them want paradise understood not properly but figuratively. With those who are wholly opposed to these writings we have dealt elsewhere and in another way, although in this very work too we defend these things in the literal sense as far as we can, so that those who refuse to believe them, moved not by reason but by a stubborn or dull mind, may still find no reason by which to prove them false. But as for these people of ours, who have faith in these divine books and do not want paradise understood according to the proper sense of the letter, namely as a most pleasant place, shaded by fruitful groves, and also large and made fertile by a great spring, though they see so many and such great green places grow into woods with no human work, by the hidden work of God: I wonder how they believe that man himself was made in a way they have never seen. Or if he too is to be understood figuratively, who begot Cain and Abel and Seth? Or were they too only figurative, and not also men born of men? Let them consider, then, from close at hand where this presumption leads, and let them try with us to take all the things that are narrated as done first as the expression of their proper sense. For who would not afterwards support them when they understand what these things also suggest by figurative meaning, whether about spiritual natures or affections themselves, or about things to come? Certainly, if the things which are named here bodily could in no way be taken bodily without harm to the faith of truth, what would remain but to understand them as said figuratively, rather than ungodly to find fault with holy Scripture? But if, understood bodily, these things not only do not hinder but even more firmly support the narrative of the divine word, there will be no one, I think, so unbelievingly stubborn that, when he sees them expounded in their proper sense according to the rule of faith, he would prefer to remain in his former opinion, if perhaps it had seemed to him that they could only be taken figuratively.

For I too, against the Manichees, who err not by taking these writings of the Old Testament otherwise than they should, but blaspheme by not accepting them at all and detesting them, wrote two books soon after my conversion, wishing quickly either to refute their ravings or to direct their attention to seeking the Christian and gospel faith in the writings which they hate. And because at that time it did not occur to me how all things could be taken in their proper sense, and it seemed rather that they could not, or could only barely and with difficulty, I explained, so as not to be held up, what the things which I could not find in the literal sense signified figuratively, as briefly and clearly as I could, so that they might not be deterred by much reading or by obscure argument from taking them in hand. Yet, remembering what I chiefly wanted and could not achieve, that all things should be understood first not figuratively but properly, and not wholly despairing that they could be understood so, I put it this way in the first part of the second book: “Certainly,” I said, “whoever wishes to take all that has been said according to the letter, that is, to understand it no otherwise than the letter sounds, and can avoid blasphemies and declare everything in agreement with the catholic faith, should not only not be begrudged, but should be held an outstanding and highly praiseworthy interpreter. But if no way out is given for understanding what is written in a manner pious and worthy of God except by believing these things to be set forth figuratively and in riddles, having the authority of the apostles, by whom so many riddles of the books of the Old Testament are solved, let us keep to the method we intend, with the help of him who urges us to ask, seek, and knock, so as to explain all these figures of things according to the catholic faith, whether they belong to history or to prophecy, without prejudice to a better and more careful treatment, either by us or by others to whom the Lord deigns to reveal it.” That is what I said then. But now, since the Lord has willed that, looking at and considering these things more carefully, I should think, not in vain I believe, that I too could show that these things were written according to their proper and not according to an allegorical manner of speech, let us examine what follows about paradise in the same way as we wished to show the earlier things.

So “God planted paradise in delights” (for this is what Eden means) “toward the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed.” It is written so because it was done so. Then he recapitulates, so as to show how this very thing which he set down briefly was done, that is, how God planted paradise and established there the man whom he had formed. For it goes on: “And God made to spring up besides from the earth every tree beautiful to look at and good for food.” He did not say, “And God made to spring up from the earth another tree” or “the rest of the trees,” but “he made to spring up besides from the earth,” it says, “every tree beautiful to look at and good for food.” So the earth had already then brought forth every tree both beautiful to look at and good for food, that is, on the third day; for on the sixth day he had said, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant yielding seed, which is upon all the earth, and every fruit-bearing tree that has in it the fruit of seed-bearing seed, which shall be food for you.” Did he then give them one thing, and wish to give another now? I think not. But since these trees set up in paradise were of the kinds which the earth had already brought forth on the third day, the earth brought them forth besides in their own time, because then, of course, what is written, that the earth brought them forth, was done causally in the earth; that is, because then it had received in hidden form the power of bringing them forth, by which power it comes about that even now the earth produces such things openly and in their own time. So the words of God saying on the sixth day, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant yielding seed, which is upon all the earth,” and the rest, are not words uttered by a sounding or temporal voice, but are as the power of creating is in his Word; but what God said without temporal sounds could be told to men only through temporal sounds. For it was to come about that man, once formed from mud and animated by his breath, and whatever of the human race came from him, would use for food the things that were to spring up on the earth from that power of generating which the earth had already received. Founding the causal reasons of this future in creation, he spoke as though it already existed, by an inner and inmost truth, which eye has not seen nor ear heard, but which his Spirit certainly revealed to the writer.

But what follows, “and the tree of life in the middle of paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of discerning good and evil,” must be considered more carefully, lest it force us into allegory, so that these were not trees but signify something else under the name of tree. For it is said of Wisdom, “She is a tree of life to all who embrace her.” But although there is an eternal Jerusalem in the heavens, a city by which it might be signified was also founded on earth; and although Sarah and Hagar signified the two covenants, they were nevertheless also two real women; and although Christ waters us with a spiritual stream through the suffering on the wood, there was nevertheless also the rock which, struck with wood, poured out water for the thirsty people, of which it could be said, “And the rock was Christ.” All those things signified something other than what they were, but they also existed bodily themselves. And when they were mentioned by the narrator, that was not figurative speech, but the express narrative of things which were a figurative foreshadowing. So there was also a tree of life, as the rock was Christ; and God did not wish man to live in paradise without the mysteries of spiritual things presented bodily. So in the other trees he had nourishment, but in that one a sacrament; signifying what but Wisdom, of whom it was said, “She is a tree of life to those who embrace her,” just as it might be said of Christ, “He is a flowing rock to those who thirst for him”? For what went before to signify him is rightly called by his name. He is the lamb that is sacrificed at the Passover; yet that was prefigured not only by saying but also by doing. For that lamb was certainly a lamb; it was plainly a lamb and was killed and eaten. And yet by that real deed something else was also prefigured; not like that fatted calf which was killed for the feast when the younger son returned. For there the narrative itself is of figures, not of things done with a figurative meaning. For it was not the evangelist but the Lord himself who narrated this; the evangelist narrated that the Lord narrated it. So what the evangelist narrated also happened, namely that the Lord said such things; but the Lord's own narrative was a parable, of which it is never required that the things told in words be shown to have happened literally. Christ is both the stone anointed by Jacob and the stone rejected by the builders which has become the head of the corner; but the first also happened in actual events, while the second was only foretold in figures. For the first was written by a narrator of past events, the second by one who only foretold future ones.

So too Wisdom, who is Christ himself, is the tree of life in the spiritual paradise, into which he sent the thief from the cross; but there was also created, to signify her, a tree of life in the bodily paradise, because that Scripture said so which, narrating things done in their own times, narrated both that man was made bodily and that, living in the body, he was established there. Or if anyone thinks that souls, when they have left the body, are held in bodily visible places, though they are without a body, let him maintain his view; there will be no lack of people to support it, so that they contend that even that rich man who thirsted was in a bodily place, and do not hesitate to declare that the soul itself is wholly bodily because of the parched tongue and the drop of water desired from Lazarus's finger; with them I do not rashly do battle about so great a question. For it is better to doubt about hidden things than to quarrel about uncertain ones. I do not doubt that that rich man is to be understood as in the burning of punishment, and that poor man in the refreshment of joys. But how that flame of hell is to be understood, that bosom of Abraham, that tongue of the rich man, that finger of the poor man, that thirst of torment, that drop of refreshment, is perhaps hardly found by those who seek gently, and never by those who fight contentiously. I must answer briefly, lest this deep question, which needs much discussion, hold us up. If souls are held in bodily places, even when stripped of their bodies, that thief could have been brought into the paradise where the body of the first man had been; so that in a more suitable place in the Scriptures, if any need demands it, we may set out in some fashion what we either ask or think on this matter too. But for now, that Wisdom is not a body and therefore not a tree, I do not doubt, nor do I think anyone doubts; but that Wisdom could have been signified in the bodily paradise through a tree, that is, through a bodily creature, as by a kind of sacrament, he alone thinks unbelievable who either does not see so many bodily sacraments of spiritual things in the Scriptures, or contends that the first man ought not to have lived with any sacrament of that kind, although the apostle says that even this, which was said about the woman who was certainly made for him from his side, “Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh,” is a great sacrament in Christ and in the church. But it is strange and hardly bearable how people want paradise to have been spoken of figuratively but do not want it to have been made figuratively too. And if they grant that, as with Hagar and Sarah, as with Ishmael and Isaac, these things too were both done and also figurative, I do not see why they do not admit that the tree of life too was truly a tree and yet prefigured Wisdom. I add this too: that although that tree gave bodily food, it was such as to strengthen the body of man in lasting health, not as from other food, but by some hidden inbreathing of wholeness. For certainly the ordinary bread had something more about it, by one cake of which God protected a man from the want of hunger for forty days. Or shall we hesitate to believe that through the food of some tree, for the sake of some higher signification, God granted to man that his body should not be changed for the worse by weakness or age, or even slip into death, when he gave to human food itself so wonderful a state that, in clay jars, flour and oil, as they ran out, were restored and did not run out? Now let someone of the contentious kind arise and say that God ought to have done such miracles in our lands, but not in paradise: as if he did not do a greater miracle there in making man from dust or woman from the man's side than when here he raised the dead.

Next we are to look at the tree of the knowledge of discerning good and evil. This tree too was certainly visible and bodily like the other trees. That it was a tree, then, is not to be doubted; but why it received this name must be asked. Now when I consider it again and again, I cannot say how much I am pleased by the view that that tree was not harmful as food (for he who had made all things very good would not have set up anything evil in paradise), but that the evil for man was the transgression of the command. For it was fitting that man, placed under the Lord God, should be forbidden something, so that obedience itself should be his virtue for deserving well of his Lord; obedience, I can say most truly, is the only virtue of every rational creature acting under God's power, and the first and greatest vice of swelling pride, leading to ruin, is to want to use one's own power; and the name of this vice is disobedience. So there would be nothing by which man might think and feel that he had a Lord unless something were commanded him. That tree, then, was not evil, but it was called the tree of the knowledge of discerning good and evil because, if man ate from it after the prohibition, the future transgression of the command would be in it, in which man would learn by experience of punishment what difference there is between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience. So this too is not said figuratively, but is to be taken as truly a tree, to which the name was given not from the fruit or apple that would grow on it, but from the very thing that was to follow when it was touched against the prohibition.

“And a river went out from Eden which watered paradise, and from there it divided into four parts. The name of one of them is Phison: it is the one that goes around the whole land of Evilat, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good, and there is the carbuncle and the green stone. And the name of the second river is Geon: it is the one that goes around the whole land of Ethiopia. And the third river is the Tigris: it is the one that flows over against the Assyrians. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” Why should I take further pains to confirm about these rivers that they are real rivers and not spoken of figuratively, as if they did not exist and only their names signified something, when they are very well known in the regions through which they flow and spread abroad among almost all nations? Rather, since it is certain that they altogether exist (for antiquity has changed the names of two of them, as the river now called Tiber was formerly called Albula; for Geon is the one now called the Nile, and the one now called the Ganges was called Phison; but the other two, Tigris and Euphrates, have kept their ancient names), we ought to be reminded by them to take the other things too first in the proper sense of the letter, not to think there is figurative speech in them, but that the very things narrated so both exist and also prefigure something; not because a parable in speech could not take something from a thing which was certainly not also real in the proper sense, as when the Lord speaks of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers. Who does not perceive and plainly see that it is a parable and that the whole of that speech is figurative? Yet the two cities named there are shown in their own places even today. But we would take these four rivers too in that way if any necessity compelled us to take the other things narrated about paradise not properly but figuratively; but as it is, since no reason forbids us first to understand the things themselves properly, why do we not rather follow simply the authority of Scripture in the narrative of things done, understanding first that they were really done, and only then examining whatever else they signify? Or shall we be disturbed by the fact that the sources of some of these rivers are said to be known and those of others wholly unknown, and that therefore it cannot be taken literally that they are divided from one river of paradise? But rather it is to be believed that, since the place of paradise itself is very far removed from human knowledge, four branches of water are divided from there, as most faithful Scripture testifies, but that those rivers whose sources are said to be known went somewhere under the earth and, after passing through long tracts of country, broke out in other places, where they are said to be known as if at their sources. For who does not know that some waters are accustomed to do this? But it is known there, where they do not run long under the earth. So a river went out from Eden, that is, from the place of delights, and watered paradise, that is, all the beautiful and fruitful trees which shaded the whole land of that region.